Apple has been hotly tipped to be on the verge of signing a US$150m deal with the Chinese software developer, Handseeing. Not only marking their first major deal in the People’s Republic, this would place the handheld giant in the new position of being able to develop games for the iPhone and iPad in-house.

“We should have a decision in about one or two months,” Tian Bo, the acquisition’s vice-president for operations told Reuters. “They’re still talking about it and it’s not quite settled yet right now.”

The online games specialist has been operating in south-east China since 2005 and it remains to be seen whether this deal relates to the planned Apple Games Centre or is a separate international venture in their increasing gaming ambitions. Apple themselves are remaining tight-lipped.

As is Tian Bo, who only added to Agence France-Presse that the negotiations would be ongoing until September when an “incremental” announcement would be made.

Until then we can only speculate how Apple will handle the rare transition from gaming platform to games developer and how this will affect the unpredictable current handheld market.